In certain endoscopes/borescopes, hereinafter referred to as probes, there are data associated with the images, such as the calibration parameters for the measurement tip and probe that were used to capture the image, along with audio comments regarding the captured image, that must be kept with the images. In a competitive system, image data, audio data, and calibration data are each stored in separate files. This approach allows the audio and/or calibration data easily to become separated from the image making features such as off-line measurement and audio playback unusable. Embedding the data right in the image solves this problem.
Graphical overlay data added to images can obscure parts of the image. It is generally desirable for this overlay data to be viewable using standard software packages, but it is also desirable in some applications to be able to recover the image data that has been replaced by the overlay. This invention allows both goals to be met.